


Invisible Scars

by WishUponADragon



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Gen, late night musings of a teenage spy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishUponADragon/pseuds/WishUponADragon
Summary: It's all fun and games until you get your traumatized flatmate drunk and learn his take on all the stories you've heard about him.





	Invisible Scars

It was a quarter to five in the morning when Tom and Alex successfully got back to their flat in Chelsea. They’d followed a party of strangers celebrating the birthday of someone they didn’t know, enjoying being easily welcomed into the group. A friend of a friend, they’d laughed. Twelve degrees of separation, right? They’d laughed and cheered and drank, and drank some more.   
Alex had started telling his stories again by the third. No one believed the teenager with hard liquor in his hand and stomach. Tom listened. He’d heard them before. It was always a sight to see what strangers would think of tall tales of supervillains and assassins and base jumping and narrow escapes.   
These ones laughed. A bard, one called him. Tom couldn’t help but smile at the mental image of Alex playing a lyre. The night drug on, and Alex’s stories were lost in the flow of conversation and pulsing music.   
Tom lost count by seven. Alex took a bottle of Daniels before they left the group to continue on their merry way. Back in the flat, sprawled across the couch, he tugged the stopper out and tilted the nearly full bottle into his mouth.   
Tom reached over and pushed it down. “Think you’ve had enough, mate,” he mumbled.   
Alex held the bottle loosely, some whiskey spilling from the careless angle he held it at. He didn’t seem to notice it. He didn’t seem to notice Tom either, though his face was half a meter away from Alex’s. Alex sat in stony silence, reminding Tom more of a war veteran than his childhood friend.   
Tom pried the bottle from Alex’s hand and set it to the side. He’d never seen Alex quite like this before and didn’t want to admit how much it unnerved him. He slapped Alex on the shoulder. “Think we’d better get some sleep.”  
Alex only blinked in response. Tom sighed and reached for the blankets strewn across the floor. Standing to go to bed didn’t seem to be in the cards for either of them, and it wouldn’t have been the first night they’d fallen asleep on the couch.   
Tom tried one last time to get a response from his catatonic flatmate by tossing the blanket so it would hit him squarely in the face. Alex pulled it down and lay back into the cushions, apparently almost asleep. Tom shook his head and pulled another blanket around himself. Sleep sounded like a dream...  
A dream which he was abruptly woken from. Alex’s eyes stayed closed but his words were shockingly clear. “Did I tell you how they died?”  
Tom blinked, disoriented and confused. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep and was dreaming this... But no, Alex had turned his head towards him and cracked one eye open. He expected an answer. “Plane crash,” he said, hoping Alex would let him rest if he answered.  
Alex closed his eye again. “Not my parents. The people I killed.” Tom suddenly found that he no longer felt much like sleeping, and that the blanket he wrapped closer to himself did little to ward off the chill settling in his gut.   
“Yeah. Loads. Like every other week.” Tom had heard all the stories. But... this felt different.  
He almost thought Alex had gone to sleep. Tom studied the grain patterns in the wooden floor by the faint moonlight through the window as he listened to his friend. Tonight was certainly different.  
“The first was in Cornwall. I was being chased. One drove into a fence trying to get me. It was electric. The other I ran off a cliff.”   
Tom shivered involuntarily. He knew what had happened in Cornwall, but never before had Alex made it sound intentional. Bad things just... happened. They happened to bad people because they were bad. Black and white, wrapped in a neat little bow. Alex continued.  
“A woman trapped me in a fish tank with a monster. I threw the monster at her. I made another crash a copter. It went down near the Thames. That’s not too far from here.  
“There was another helicopter. It’s a bit funny, they don’t stand up well against snowmobiles. I don’t know if Grief died in the crash, or the fire, or the copter hitting the ground. Julius, I thought he died in the fire at the school. He didn’t. I shot him later.”  
“Alex, stop. Stop. You had to. They were trying to kill you. They would have.” Tom’s voice rose in insistence as he spoke.  
Alex fixed his cold brown eyes on Tom and in the low morning light of the flat it was the most terrifying sight he’d ever witnessed. In that moment he understood how and why so many people feared Alex. His friend had assassin eyes.   
After a moment Alex turned over and Tom thought he might go to sleep. “It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It was still me.”   
Tom said nothing. He didn’t truly believe that Alex was at fault for anything that had happened. But he wondered if, deep down, Alex did. That had to be worse. Everyone told him he wasn’t to blame, but he didn’t, couldn’t, believe them...  
“Goodnight, Tom.”  
Tom suppressed a shudder at the detachment in his friend’s voice. He knew he didn’t entirely manage to keep the horror out of his own. “Goodnight, Alex.”


End file.
